We told Congress!

We are walking on air after a successful briefing to congressional aides on Monday.

Thanks to the support of Congresswoman Betty McCollum and her staff, we had an hour and a half of the undivided attention of about two dozen influential legislative assistants and officials from the State Department, United Nations Information Centre, World Bank, and the Ark Foundation of Africa. The briefing was in the U.S. Capitol Building. Pretty cool.

Kou, Tracy Baumgardt, and I were able to sum up what we’ve learned and what we’ve done since this campaign began in October. We distributed the report on child abduction attributed to Murle groups that was provided on our request by the United Nations Mission in Sudan. Eric G. Berman of the Small Arms Survey cut short his vacation to join us on the panel and provide valuable expertise on disarmament.

More to the point, we were able to lay out our recommendations for what the United States can do to stop intertribal child abduction in Jonglei State. Our audience was receptive. But here is the important part: Our call for action probably will not go any further unless you get behind our recommendations. We’re asking that you contact your representatives in the House and your Senators and tell them the U.S. aid program in Sudan should put resources toward eradicating the causes of child abduction in Jonglei state.

Specifically, as I put it in my prepared comments for the briefing: “We are calling on the U.S. Agency for International Development to shift resources for public health and economic development to Jonglei state. We call upon USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives to take an active role in helping Southern Sudanese officials to achieve reconciliation between the tribes in conflict in Jonglei state. We are asking Congress to support and encourage those efforts, which in part means supporting staff and facilities for the whole USAID program in Sudan.”

If you want to read the prepared comments by Tracy and I, click here.

Thank you to our donors whose generosity helped us travel there including, at the last minute, the good people at Northwest Airlines. We are grateful that Rep. McCollum was joined by Minnesota’s Senators in co-hosting the event, along with the crucial group of legislators already paying close attention to this part of the world, the Congressional Caucus on Sudan.